TobCon 2

There were no GMs doing double-duty this year and most games had a minimum of four players.

I deliberately chose to play in the non-traditional game systems but the range of rules was wide. Of the official editions only third did not seem to be represented. There was also a Zweihander scenario.

Von Kessel’s Run

This scenario riffed off an entry into a popular science-fiction film series without being a parody. It easily took the awards for most 2018 scenario I played in and the worst root vegetable-related pun.

A group of conmen and scoundrels are thrown into debtors prison ahead of the impending royal wedding. A mysterious figure has purchased their debts and is poised to give ownership to them to the worst people in the character’s lives. Unless of course they can steal one tiny necklace from the Imperial Palace when everyone will be at the wedding ceremony.

To do that though they’ll need to brave the Von Kessel run, a section of ancient sewers that run below the palace but which have been sealed up for centuries.

The adventure broke into roughly three parts: planning the run, running the run, stealing the goods.

Planning the run and executing the patron’s instructions to open the von Kessel run was pleasing abstract and straight-forward which is not generally my experience of convention “heist” games.

After that there was a mini-dungeon crawl and the bizarre discovery of the “true” emperor hooked up to tubes and swimming in alchemical preparations.

The tonal shifts between the three sections threw me a bit. I knew the dungeon crawl was coming but I did find it hard to shift from the more abstract roleplaying to the detailed dungeon exploring. Similarly the palace section started off as a conventional stealth dungeon but after two encounters the sudden switch to a fight with a psychic emperor seemed strange.

My life with Margritte von Wittgenstein

A skinned version of My Life with Master that used the corrupted noble family presented in Death on the Reik as the setting for the game.

I hadn’t played my Life with Master before so I was excited to give it a go. It was also one of the more interesting examples of examining the game world from the point of view of the villains.

As a minion of an evil necromancer you are never really responsible for the evil acts that you do, instead it is your weakness in the face of your master’s orders that is your true culpability and moral failing.

With that moral reflection complete misery and horror was unleashed on the village of Wittgendorf. On the first night the village’s doctor had his hands amputated fatally, the initiate of Shallya was murdered and her body and home burnt, the village inn caught fire and its supply of spirit exploded in the fire, while several children were abducted and brought to the castle.

Thank the gods that by the second night the minions had been pushed to the brink and were prepared to turn on Lady Margritte as the incensed outlaws descended on the village to seek justice on the servants of the family.

Unlike things like Realms of Chaos that kind of exult in the character’s evil and the power of force without restraint My Life with Master finds the tragedy in the balance between power and helplessness that the minions have. Something that fits with the Gothic Romance elements of the game world a lot more.

The Master in the Mountains

This was the scenario I ran and was essentially a playset and hack for the Clink rules system.

I’d played the game before but not this variation. I felt that maybe in terms of pushing the envelope of game systems this might have been a step too far.

The players came up with a great story of how the Master had swapped his heart with his one great love, an elf queen. To destroy him they must destroy the heart before the Master found it. Sadly they failed to do this in time.

Karl-Franz is dead! Long live the Emperor!

System-wise this was a Hot War hack and it is one that does this high-level factional politics really well.

As is normal in these type of games we ended up with a very strange Empire with the Countess of Nuln usurping the Grand Theogonist and putting the electoral vote of the Sigmarite church towards the Ulrican candidate.

However overall the Empire remained surprisingly united and defeated all its external foes while rooting out a few of the enemies within along the way.

Steve has had the Traveller version of this game, Eve of Rebellion published in a nice edition and I would recommend picking it up if you haven’t seen something like this. Hot War is a little hard to find these days but the rules-system is used pretty much unchanged.